Anyone Else Feel Rushed in the Campaign?

**Razor1952** · 02-25-2007, 09:58

Originally Posted by sapi

I've got the opposite problem - thanks to non-existant diplomacy, everyone declares war with me and thus i have to fight them.

:(

I find that hard to reconcile, my personal experience is that diplomacy works if you cultivate your friends. As Venice I was able to go from deceitful where lots of factions declared on me to reliable where everyone wants to be my friend. Of course I bribe the pope(100x100) and did the same for Milan and france and Hre early on till I made the mistake of travelling through HRE territory without consent. I never had to fight a catholic army which was not excommed.

Pretty much all catholic factions are so-so or above relations(except Milan which I had to take out the local cities to stategically leave with a few choke points to defend if necessary(after they were excommed of course). Even HRE now at peace and amiable.

Now 30 provinces and the mongols have arrived and Jerusalem and most of nearby provinces are heavily defended and upgraded. Only the Turks and Moors are at war with me (aside from a crippled Milan) and everyone else is happy with me.

I turned my young doge +8 dread down to +2 dread only in about 20 turns. he's still in his 40's. That probably did more for my reputation than anything else.

Unfortunately even playing to preserve reputation and relations my game could easily be over before gunpowder.

**nekrotyrael** · 02-25-2007, 15:08

in 3 vh/vh long campaigns i haven't got to gunpowder yet ;(

**Foz** · 02-25-2007, 21:14

Originally Posted by Razor1952

I find that hard to reconcile, my personal experience is that diplomacy works if you cultivate your friends. As Venice I was able to go from deceitful where lots of factions declared on me to reliable where everyone wants to be my friend. Of course I bribe the pope(100x100) and did the same for Milan and france and Hre early on till I made the mistake of travelling through HRE territory without consent. I never had to fight a catholic army which was not excommed.

Pretty much all catholic factions are so-so or above relations(except Milan which I had to take out the local cities to stategically leave with a few choke points to defend if necessary(after they were excommed of course). Even HRE now at peace and amiable.

Now 30 provinces and the mongols have arrived and Jerusalem and most of nearby provinces are heavily defended and upgraded. Only the Turks and Moors are at war with me (aside from a crippled Milan) and everyone else is happy with me.

I turned my young doge +8 dread down to +2 dread only in about 20 turns. he's still in his 40's. That probably did more for my reputation than anything else.

Unfortunately even playing to preserve reputation and relations my game could easily be over before gunpowder.

Unless you've enabled the diplomacy variables, what you've described is not due to diplomacy working correctly. The variables control at what level of reputation and relationship the AI factions will trust you and thus respect your alliance with them, and are set by default so they never will. If you haven't enabled diplomacy, then any experiences of the AI seeming to keep alliances are typically due to your overall military presence being so great that they fear to attack you, or that you have a strong enough military border presence against any given faction that they do not feel they can successfully attack.

While I understand that the AI does not really feel things, of course, what I am talking about are the various triggers in descr_campaign_ai_db.xml that tell the AI when and how to attack. One of the primary conditions is to check military strength nationally and locally of the target, to gauge if a war could be profitable or winnable. If you have a strong enough military presence, it would essentially make the AI understand that it could never win, and thus not attack. The fact that you say your game could still be over before gunpowder indicates that you probably have a very large military, or you'd not have amassed territory so quickly... which of course makes it all the more likely that your power is the factor staving off the AI aggression as opposed to anything else. In my experience w/ diplomacy disabled (i.e. out of the box game) your border defense is the single biggest factor that determines whether you keep peace with any given AI faction.

**Razor1952** · 02-26-2007, 01:08

Originally Posted by Foz

While I understand that the AI does not really feel things, of course, what I am talking about are the various triggers in descr_campaign_ai_db.xml that tell the AI when and how to attack. One of the primary conditions is to check military strength nationally and locally of the target, to gauge if a war could be profitable or winnable. If you have a strong enough military presence, it would essentially make the AI understand that it could never win, and thus not attack. The fact that you say your game could still be over before gunpowder indicates that you probably have a very large military, or you'd not have amassed territory so quickly... which of course makes it all the more likely that your power is the factor staving off the AI aggression as opposed to anything else. In my experience w/ diplomacy disabled (i.e. out of the box game) your border defense is the single biggest factor that determines whether you keep peace with any given AI faction.

Thank you Foz.

I should have mentioned I'm playing L to C 2.1 which I think includes an ai trigger, but I havn't looked deeply into whats happening there. Nevertheless it seemed the ai was behaving what I thought was properly, albeit as I approach target province number(35 for Venice) I guess ?tall poppy triggers should be enabled if they not in this mod.

Certainly in this incarnation diplomacy seemed work, when I was despicable everyone( alot anyway) declared against me , when it improved I was able to get a reasonable peace(albiet with a bit of persistence and bribery). BTW I only had Pope as ally , except Turks , who subsequently attacked because of Jihad called. I was able to largely keep fellow catholics happy , whilst attacking Islamist and orthodox states. My goal is of course to get 35 provinces almost exclusively from these stated only.

The turks btw seem to have no trouble continuing their war against me, and I intentionally have not taken the eastern and NE provinces, as I presume they will take the brunt of the mongols first.

**KHPike** · 02-26-2007, 04:05

Well, I also feel rushed because once you've destroyed another faction, another faction/factions steps in to fill in the gap of war.

**Rozanov** · 02-26-2007, 14:55

Playing with 1.1 patch but no other mods.

Never seem to have enough time to get the required number of regions before time-out.

Currently I'm in the 1570's as Spain, have about 40 regions and have started work on the New World, but the Timurids have the Middle east and the Mongols have Russia and Central Europe and I'm still grinding away at Milan who are a tough nut to crack.

Would it be possible to have an option on the start of campaign screen, where you decide on level of difficulty etc to have a turns per year option - perhaps in the 1.3 patch if there is one.

It'd be a major patch as you'd need to amend all the build times, movement rates etc but that "only" needs the multiplier set for each option.

**gardibolt** · 02-26-2007, 17:59

There is a feeling of being pushed pretty hard, though I ended up with the requisite number of territories with like 60 turns left (I'm not taking Jerusalem just yet---want to visit the New World if I can stop it from CTDing).

Playing as the English in unmodded M2TW, I'm fighting Denmark and Hungary (the last two Catholic nations left other than the Pope himself), and they're both sending mobs of DFK at me. They'll be even more terrifying when the shield bug is fixed....